Carrier route record
DLATL→DCA
Delta Air Lines · Atlanta to Washington
- Flights
- 3,838
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 56%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on ATL to DCA draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 3,838 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 1,053 at 74.7% on time.
PSA Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 74.7% on time across 1,053 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,721 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.58%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.1%
Every carrier on ATL to DCA, 6,812 flights
These figures cover 3,838 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on ATL to DCA
Delta flew 3,838 of the 6,812 flights on ATL to DCA, most of the route. Its 67.3% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 74.7% to Delta at 67.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines | 1,053 | 74.7% | 125 min | 7.69% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,139 | 73.5% | 66 min | 1.76% | C |
| Republic Airways | 462 | 73.3% | 54 min | 3.25% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 259 | 72.2% | 62 min | 3.86% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 61 | 68.3% | 171 min | 1.64% | C |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 3,838 | 67.3% | 60 min | 2.58% | C |
PSA Airlines cancels 7.7% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on ATL to DCA
- DL 73711:0081.1% · 365 flights
- DL 36013:0970.8% · 365 flights
- DL 38009:1679.7% · 365 flights
- DL 53721:5968.9% · 364 flights
- DL 92607:2583.3% · 362 flights
- DL 32518:5958.3% · 362 flights
- DL 95016:5062.5% · 357 flights
- DL 72719:5954.5% · 350 flights
- DL 85015:3056.0% · 349 flights
- DL 83217:5558.3% · 321 flights
- DL 37820:5964.2% · 262 flights
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 25 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am362 flights83.3%
- 8am–11am372 flights79.5%
- 11am–2pm723 flights76.0%
- 2pm–5pm652 flights59.3%
- 5pm–8pm755 flights58.5%
- 8pm–5am974 flights62.4%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.5% on time, against 83.3% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 974 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on ATL to DCA through the year
July is the worst month at 47.8% on time, 31 points below September, the best at 78.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 329 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 61.5%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 73,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 45%National Airspace System
- 35%Carrier
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 25,000 of the 73,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 72,915 reported delay minutes.
45% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 33,000 minutes out of 73,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.58%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 547 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.9% on time across 3,838 flights, 14 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 14 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,838 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on ATL to DCA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 78.5% on time and July 47.8%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,721 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to DCA, every carrier
- Delta on DCA to ATL, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on ATL to DCA74.7%
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to DCA73.5%
- Republic Airways on ATL to DCA73.3%
- Envoy Air on ATL to DCA72.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.